Hey guys, it's Kirsti. Welcome back to my
channel and welcome to another weekly
wrap up. This one is for the 7th through
the 13th of May, and this week I read a
total of nine books and 3,155 pages.
Before we go any further, I want to warn
you guys, this is going to be the, like,
Guns and Ships version of a weekly
wrap up in which I talk insanely fast,
because it is currently 12.04 and I have
to go out at like 12.25. Obviously for my
full thoughts on any of these books you
can check out my Goodreads and as always
there's a link to that down in the description
below. Book number 1 this week is Into
the Water by Paula Hawkins. I have been
wanting to read this book for a while
now, because I really really enjoyed The
Girl on the Train and so I wanted to
read Paula Hawkins' second book. And
this one again is an adult thriller. It's
set in a small town and just outside the
small town there is this particular, like,
pool of water off the side of the river
and over the centuries many many women
have either committed suicide there
or been drowned there, and this book is
told from the perspective of probably
like a dozen different characters and so
it's a little confusing at first. But
all of the characters have in some way
been impacted by one of the deaths of
one of these women at this particular
pool and so it all ties into that and
there's various characters who are, like,
investigating the most recent suicide/
murder - they're not quite sure
which - but in the past their mother or
sister or somebody has themselves
committed suicide or been murdered at
this particular location. So it was
really fast, it was really action-packed,
it did take me a little while to get my
head around all of the different
characters, but I really really enjoyed
this one and I ended up giving it 4
stars. The second book that I read
this week was a DNF, and that is The
First Wives Club by Olivia Goldsmith. I
have been meaning to read this one for
probably a couple of years now. My dear
friend Wendy sent me a copy of this and
it's just been sitting on my shelf. This
is the book that the movie was based on,
but I don't think the two could be
more different. This was published in
1992, and it is essentially the story of
these three women deciding that since
their husbands have divorced them and
replaced them with younger models, they
are going to get revenge. I made it I
think like 230 pages into this book and
I had to DNF it because every single
male character in this book is
effectively Donald Trump. Donald Trump
himself is mentioned numerous times in
the course of the story and I just...
In the current political climate,
I could not deal with this book and with
the male characters. It's also incredibly
dated in terms of a lot of the writing
and the language and the attitudes that
happen in this book. I just...
Yeah. I...I just couldn't quite deal with
this one, particularly in the current
political climate. Maybe if I'd read
a year of so ago, I would have had a
different reaction to it but they just... I
pictured literally every male character
in the book as Donald Trump and I just... no.
No. I couldn't deal with this anymore
so I DNFed it. Book number three this week
is The Cruelty by Scott Bergstrom. This
is a young adult thriller, I guess? It's
kind of a spy book and basically the
protagonist, Gwendolyn, she is 17 years
old and she believes that her father is
a diplomat. She's been to a million and
one schools in her life, she speaks a
bunch of languages because, you know, they
lived all over the world etcetera etcetera. And
then one day her father disappears and
she comes to realise that her father is
actually a spy for the CIA and that he
has been kidnapped and she decides that
the CIA are not doing enough to get him
back, so she decides that she's going to
effectively drop out of school and go to
Europe to try and find her father. So all
of that sounded great and I was really
interested to read this book. However. I
feel like what I got was effectively an
adult thriller that had been given a
teenage protagonist as an attempt to
market it as YA. Because this really is
incredibly dark and it didn't feel a lot
like a YA book to me. In the course of
the story, Gwendolyn, like, she's forced
to kill a bunch of people, she's nearly
raped at least once, possibly twice, in
the course of the story. She ends up that
she's working for these kind of like mob
boss sort of characters, she ends up that
she's involved in human trafficking. So
there are a lot of incredibly dark and
serious issues in this book, and the way
that they're written doesn't feel like
it's written for a young adult audience.
So this one is definitely for, like, the 16,
17 year-olds - at least - of the YA kind of
spectrum and yeah... I wanted to love this
book because the premise sounded
incredibly intriguing but it just ended
up falling a little bit flat because it
was so dark and so...nyargh at times. So yeah.
I did not love this one and I gave it
3 stars. The fourth book that I
finished this week is Conviction by
Kelly Loy Gilbert. This one I picked up
for my book club. I didn't particularly
want to read it, it doesn't especially
interest me. This one is a contemporary
YA book that tells the story of a boy
named Braden whose incredibly
controlling father is arrested for
killing a police officer. He ends up that he
is basically at home with his much older
brother who comes in to take
guardianship of him. The two of them have
a very fraught relationship and it's the
two of them basically waiting to
see what's going to happen with
their father's trial. I was bored shitless by this
book. This seems to be a fairly unpopular
opinion - there are millions and millions
of positive reviews of this book on
Goodreads. I was bored shitless. A lot of
the story revolves around baseball and a
lot of the baseball stuff is, like,
metaphors for Braden's life. But because
I don't understand baseball and I have
no interest in baseball and I skimmed
over the passages about baseball, like,
all of those metaphors fell flat for me.
I just... they went over my head or I
didn't pay attention to them or
something like that. I did not like the
characters, I didn't especially like the
writing, I wasn't a big fan of the lack
of character development in the story.
Like what I wanted from this book was
for Braden to realise how incredibly
abusive his father has been towards him
over the years. His father is very very
much a gaslighter and is also
completely abusive in the way that he
will, like, take Braden out to baseball
practice and then say "You didn't do as
well as I think you should have done, so
I'm going to take your stuff and I'm
going to take all your water and you can
walk the, like, five miles home in 105
degree heat" and I'm like "Yeah, no. That is
not okay." So what I wanted was for Braden
to realise "Oh, my dad is a massive dick
and I want nothing to do with him." And
yet that didn't really happen. He just
sort of continued plodding away the same
as he had always been, and maybe it was
trying to make some, like, big statement
about, you know, the nature of abuse and
the Stockholm Syndrome that kind of goes
along with that when you've been raised
in that sort of an environment, but I
just...yeah. It fell really really flat for
me. I didn't like Braden as a character.
He was meant to be 16 and he turns 17 in the
course of story. He read more like a 13
or 14 year old. I just...yeah. I...I did not
enjoy this book and I gave it 2 stars.
So book club should be fun on Thursday
night!
Book number 5 this week was my first reread
of the week, and that is Jane Eyre by
Charlotte Bronte. You guys should know by
now how much I love the absolute shit
out of this book. I have read it I think
probably closing in on 20 times, because
I studied this twice in high school. I
still get something new out of it every
time, and I think what I got out of it
this time
is the fact that like basically all of
the servants at Thornfield know what's
going on. I mean they don't know who Bertha
is, but they know that she exists and
they're kind of all there being like
"Wait, does the...does the governess don't know?"
And so Jane is kind of in this situation
where everything is a huge surprise to
her but, like, it's not to
anybody else in the story and that just
struck me as so incredibly funny. Like,
obviously it's not. But it just... for some
reason, the idea of everybody but her
knowing what's happening is just
hilarious to me for some reason. I love the
shit out of this book. I will always love
the shit out of this book. I gave it 5
stars. Again. The sixth book that I
finished this week is Queens of Geek by
Jen Wilde. This is an Australian
contemporary YA book that follows the
story of three teenagers who go from
Melbourne to LA to attend SupaCon,
which kind of seems like it's a cross
between Comic-Con and, like, something
like VidCon. It's a convention for pop
culture stuff and, you know, they're fangirls
and fanboys of various things. So
the story is split between two of these
teenagers. It's split between Charlie, who
is a massive YouTube star - she has
three million subscribers, which is
bonkers to me being part of the Booktube
community. Like, nobody has that many
subscribers. Anyway, so Charlie has three
million subscribers.
She is also Chinese-Australian and she's
also bisexual, and the bisexuality is Own
Voices representation. The other
narrator is Taylor, who is autistic and
also has anxiety and she's also
overweight. And the anxiety and the
autism are also Own Voices. So there is a
lot of Own Voices representation in this
book. It basically follows their story
over the course of the, like, two or three
days of SupaCon, and it was a really
really great story. I found it incredibly
compelling, I loved all of the characters.
Yes, it's a little bit insta-lovey at
times because it follows the romantic
relationships that crop up for each
of these narrators. But it was just so cute and
adorable and I really really loved it.
I loved the writing, I loved the
characters, I loved the nerdiness of it
all. I just really enjoyed this book and
I kind of wasn't expecting to enjoy it
as much as I did. It's fairly short, I
sped through it, it's great. I gave this one
a wholehearted 5 stars. Next up this week
is one that I read for my Classics Club
project and that is A Passage to India
by E.M. Forster. I don't know what I expected
this book to be, but this was not what I
expected it to be. It''s set in India in
the early 20th century and it's kind of
dealing with the dichotomy between
British Indian society and, like, Indian
Indian society. Essentially, this young woman
and her rather elderly companion arrive
in a small Indian town and they feel
immediately trapped by the British
community. They befriend an Indian Muslim
guy and he says that he'll take them to
see the local group of caves and they're
like "Cool, awesome! We would love to see
the real India."
And then things go horribly awry. I found
the writing of this incredibly
compelling. I loved that it deals with
the dichotomy of colonialism and the
idea of India becoming an independent
nation, and I just... I don't know, I just
found this story incredibly intriguing
and I really enjoyed it which I kind of
wasn't expecting to do for some baffling
reason. So I ended up I gave this one
4 stars. Book number eight this
week was another reread and that is Open
Road Summer by Emory
Lord. This one is a contemporary YA
book that follows the story of a girl
named Reagan over the course of one
summer as she follows her best friend,
Dee, who is kind of a Taylor Swift-esque
character, as she follows her around on
tour and falls in love with this boy
named Matt. It's really cute, it's really
fluffy, it's a great summer read, it's
pretty simplistic and a little bit
predictable, but I still really enjoyed
it and it was exactly what I needed at
that particular point in time, so I gave
this one 4 stars. And the final
book that I finished this week is The
Apothecary's House by Adrian Mathews.
This one is fairly chunky and it took me
approximately forever to get through it,
because I just wasn't completely sucked
into the story. It is the story of this
young woman named Ruth. She's an art
historian working at a museum in
Amsterdam,
dealing with repatriation of Jewish
paintings that were taken by the Nazis
during the Holocaust. And this woman
submits an application to have this
painting that belonged to her family
returned. Ruth starts investigating and
finds out that there is a rival claim
and then she starts getting threats. And so
it's kind of her story trying to find out
the secrets behind the painting - because
it's an 18th century painting that very
much doesn't look like an 18th century
painting. So she's trying to find out
story of the painting and whether it
does actually belong to this woman and
her family and then who's threatening
her and all of this kind of stuff. And it just...
there was a little too much going on I
feel like. And it also fell a little bit
flat in terms of the threat stuff. Like,
it needed to be either more or less.
There was a lot of Ruth just, like,
having conversations with her friends
and there were a lot of subplots that I
just didn't really give a shit about. So I
feel like this could have been probably
at least 100 pages shorter than it is
and still have covered everything. The
last probably hundred pages were a lot
more exciting than pretty much the rest
of the book, so I did end up enjoying the
ending of the story but yeah. On the
whole, this one fell a little bit flat
for me and it wasn't nearly
as exciting as I wanted it to be, so I
gave it 3 stars. So there you have it, friends.
That is all the books that I finished this
week, which I have just gone through in
approximately fifteen minutes which I'm
incredibly impressed by because usually
with my weekly wrap ups, I end up with
about 35 minutes of footage. So high five
to myself. If you have read any of these
books and you have thoughts on them,
please let me know down in the comments.
I would love to talk about them with you.
Thank you guys so much for watching, I
love all your faces and I will see you on
Wednesday at a more normal speed. Bye guys.
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